YES! FINALLY!

I have been pissed about the Enterprise being destroyed time and again like it's some trivial amount of resources to construct such a thing. How often do you hear about aircraft carriers or battle ships being lost? Well, in a full-out war, it's not uncommon. But a ship on a mission of exploration?

And the same Captain having the same ship shot out from under him on multiple occasions? I don't think he'd be likely to be given another such brand-new incarnation. (Granted, two different film series, still....)

Yep, henceforth the USS Enterprise is now the USS Kenny for me. I think my wife might go with the USS Sean Bean.

2015 in Books

2015 was a weak year for books, counting only 18, which is the same number that I read in 2014. The number is a little vague as that included Charles Stross' collections of the Trader Wars series which is like 6 books and soon to be growing. This year I'm already over 18 and the year isn't half over yet.

12/30 Lest Darkness Fall and Other Stories, L. Sprague de Camp
12/19 The Liminal People, Ayize Jama-Everett
12/12 Warrior Women, Edited by Paula Guran

11/27 Clockwork Lives, Kevin J. Anderson & Neil Peart
11/21 Scribe From Shadows, Moira Moore
11/? Brave New Girls anthology

10/2 Knight Moves, Walter Jon Williams

9/22 Forgotten Suns, Judith Tarr
9/11 The Shepherd's Crown, Terry Pratchett

8/28 Starfarers, Vonda McIntyre
8/23 Crossfire, Nancy Kress
8/21 The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, Barry Hughart (re-read)
8/8 Clockwork Angels, Kevin J. Anderson & Neil Peart

7/11 The Annihilation Score, Stross

4/17 So, Anyway, John Cleese
4/1 Twinmaker, Sean Williams

3/15 The Revolution Trade, Stross

2/? The Trader's War, Stross

I'm not going to talk about all of them, but a few deserve mention.

The Trader's War series by Stross is interesting. I think it could be argued whether it is science fiction or fantasy. It's sort of contemporary, beginning with a woman who is in modern times, finds a locket with a complicated Celtic-like knot pattern, she stares at the pattern and finds herself in another world with a splitting headache. Turns out it's a mutation that allows her to pop between worlds, and she's part of a noble family and she's also long-thought dead. The problem is that the second world is pretty thoroughly pre-Renaissance (Christianity didn't take hold there) and she's determined to drag them kicking and screaming in to the 21st century. It's a somewhat grim read but still quite interesting, definitely a political intrigue book.

The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart are FANTASTIC if you like Chinese historical fantasy. Master Li has a slight flaw to his character and is a private investigator. Number Ten Ox is rather strong and quite fond of Master Li. Their first adventure has them saving the children of Ox's village who have all fallen quite ill and will require divine artifacts to save them. And it gets more weird and fun from there. I read at least the first two of them ages ago and was delighted to find all three collected in one ebook volume. HIGHLY recommended.

The Clockwork Angels and Clockwork Lives books are quite interesting. Very much YA targeted. It's an alternate world where steam and alchemy is king, and the Clockmaker rules the land. Well, at least one of the lands. Turns out there's lands across the sea that supply necessary alchemical reagents that they must trade with. The second story was quite good: sort of a Canterbury Tales where a woman has to go on a quest to fill a book with traveller's stories. It melds quite well with the first book. But it's the authors that are the interesting bit: Neal Pearte is the drummer for the rock band Rush. Rush worked with Kevin Anderson and produced two books and a Rush CD, Clockwork Angels, that's a lot more interesting when you also have read the books.

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett was a heart-breaking read. Not only was it the end of the Tiffany Aching/Wee Free Men YA series, it was the last Discworld book written by Sir Pterry. I was practically crying all through the book. It was a marvelous finale to Sir Pterry's career, and I am so happy that I got to meet him at a convention in Phoenix a few years ago. A lot of people don't care for the Tiffany stories, but I think they're quite wonderful, and it's a series that I'd love to re-read as the Pictsies are huge amounts of fun.

And John Cleese's authorized autobiography, So, Anyway, is great. It focuses mainly through the early Python years. I particularly enjoyed his education and his early years working for the BBC. I've read other books about Monty Python and his time there, and I have a better understanding of why he left after the third season. In an afterward for the book he talked about the reunion show that Python did a few years ago, and at one point he was waiting in the wings to come on and he thought to himself, “Why am I here? I don't want to do this.” Just like when he left Python, he thought that they were done as the third season was, in his view, highly repetitive of the first two seasons. And I think he was correct. In an interview with him that I heard, he talked about he considers himself a writer/performer, not an actor. He loves performing the things that he writes, but doesn't enjoy working with other people's material so much.

2015 in Movies

This year in movies, 35 seen (excluding DVD and TV), is a bit higher than 2014's 32 and below '13s 43. This year is already over 20, so that 43 seems achievable. In cases where I've seen a new release multiple times, I count it as one movie.

12/27 Star Wars 7

11/28 Mockingjay 2
11/14 Spectre

10/23 Bridge of Spies
10/16 Goosebumps
10/11 The Martian
10/3 Hotel Transylvania 2

9/20 Pawn Sacrifice
9/5 Transporter Refueled

8/28 Fantastic Four
8/22 Hitman: Agent 47
8/21 American Ultra
8/15 Man from UNCLE
8/1 Mr. Holmes

7/31 Pixels
7/18 Ant Man
7/9 Inside Out
7/7 Get Hard
7/7 The Wedding Ringer
7/7 A Woman Walks Home Alone At Night
7/4 Minions

6/21 Shaun the Sheep
6/13 Spy
6/7 Tomorrowland

5/23 Mad Max: Fury Road
5/2 Avengers: Age Of Ultron

4/18 The Woman in Gold
4/2 Home
3/14 Chappie

2/22 Jupiter Ascending
2/20 Kingsman
2/6 Seventh Son

1/15 The Interview
1/10 The Imagination Game
1/3 Night at the Museum 3

Again, I'm not going to talk about all of them.

Night at the Museum 3 was sad in light of the death of Robin Williams. It was a good one for one of his final movies and was quite fun. I was not familiar with Rebel Wilson prior to this film and am looking forward to seeing her in other roles.

It was a good year for spy movies with Spy, The Interview, Kingsman, Bridge of Spies, Man from UNCE, and Spectre. And I have the first three in my collection, eventually I'm sure I'll get a copy of Spectre, but for some reason the more recent Bond movies, i.e. Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig, just don't have much of a repeat value for me. I'm still miffed that Timothy Dalton didn't get a third movie – his second one had such a terrible and horrible story that no one could have made a good movie out of it – but he seems to be having a lot of fun with his current projects, such as Penny Dreadful, getting to play a Sir Richard Burton (the explorer Burton, not the actor) clone. In my opinion License To Kill is the absolute worst James Bond movie: much worse than George Lazenby's or Octopussy or A View To A Kill.

Spy was such a wonderful turn-it-on-its-head spy movie. I really liked Melissa McCarthy in her buddy cop movie The Heat (2013), but I loved her in this one and am really looking forward to Ghostbusters. The Interview was really wild: I loved the concept before North Korea got pissed, and the madder they got the more I had to see it. I didn't get to see the Christmas Day premiere, but I was amazed when the local theater showed it a few weeks later and I saw it. It is, by no means, a great film – but it is a huge amount of fun. I bought the DVD when it came out, and they were giving away free t-shirts! So I was quite happy to get a The Interview tee. Kingsman was also a bit of turn-it-on-its-head film, and I also quite liked it. It was an amazingly over the top spoof of the Bond movies. However, it was also a VERY radical departure from the graphic novel that it was based on. I picked it up and was very surprised to see the GN was much more main-stream Bond than what the movie was. It was OK, but I doubt that I'll be keeping the GN. I also imagine there would be a considerable cognitive dissonance shock if I'd been a huge fan of the GN before the movie came out.

We also particularly enjoyed Bridge of Spies and the Man From UNCLE, having just been to Berlin. Even though UNCLE was not filmed in Berlin, when we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum we could feel the movie's realism. And in the case of Bridge of Spies, we drove across that actual bridge! That was pretty cool.

American Ultra and Hitman are also technically spy movies. Ultra was very interesting: sort of Bill & Ted Excellent Spy Adventure. A stoner doesn't know that he's a deeply programmed master spy and killer. Hitman was not bad, not great. I understand it's much better than the first Hitman movie. I have to add that I have not played the computer game, so I have no idea how faithful it is to the move.

Get Hard, The Wedding Ringer, A Woman Walks Home Alone At Night, and Shaun the Sheep were all movies that I saw flying to/from the USA and Berlin. I wasn't really interested in seeing Get Hard and Wedding Ringer when they were in the theater, but they were a lot funnier than I'd expected. A Woman Walks Home Alone At Night was very interesting. Not a great film, but still quite interesting. It is an Iranian vampire movie. I shall repeat that. An Iranian vampire movie. Filmed in Iran. It was an interesting slice of life of rural, industrial (oil production) Iran. Lots of drugs and disco. It was great getting to see Shaun the Sheep a few weeks before it released in the USA. I love Aardman animations and it was lovely to see a feature-length film with such a nice story. I was busting a gut laughing to it while listening through headphones that my wife finally had to watch it, she also loved it.

Minions we did not see on the plane: we saw it in Berlin. In German. And loved it. Look at it: the minions speak gibberish, and anyone else's dialog you can figure out from context and actions. I saw it again in the theaters when we got home and it was pretty much exactly what I thought was going on.

Also, if you ever find yourself in Berlin, make an effort to go to the Astor Theater. Superlatives escape me when it comes to describing this place, it's just so freakin' amazing. I so want to go back to it. Germans are interesting people when it comes to lip-sync: they are utter perfectionists and their voice actors do perfect matches for the lip movements of whoever it is that they're dubbing. Even though they're totally off-screen, they're treated like so many Americans treat the actual screen stars. I think that's pretty cool.

Star Wars 7? Not particularly impressed. Goosebumps? Lots of fun. Mockingjay? Good conclusion to the series and a very good book read. The Martian? Excellent, also a good book read. Hotel Transylvania? Surprisingly fun, I bought the first movie on DVD on my way home from El Paso where I saw it. Transporter? Waste of time. Stick with the first two and ignore the third, though I expect I'll be buying the TV series that I did not know existed. Fantastic Four? Garbage, but I liked it more than the first two. Apparently it was made to let the studio keep the license, but was not intended for release. Mr. Holmes – excellent movie. It deserves awards. Great take on a fictional hero at the end of his life, and also sad knowing that we won't have Sir Ian for too much longer.

And I think I'll leave it at that.

Eleven Years

Saturday was our 11th anniversary. I was so very lucky to meet Russet, though it was she that found me via an on-line dating site that is no more. There have been many ups and downs, and it's a certainty that there will be more, and it's frustrating having moved from Phoenix to rural New Mexico, but overall I certainly can't complain.

Yesterday afternoon we drove up to Ruidoso for dinner and a movie. The restaurant that Russet picked was chosen for one specific feature: they had a bacon-wrapped date appetizer – a dozen to the order! The rest of the things on offer also looked quite good, your basic surf and turf bar and grill. And the dates did not disappoint – in fact, I'd rate them as the best tasting non-dessert that we had. I was quite pleased that they had crème brule on offer, and even more pleased when the waiter explained that the kitchen warmed up the custard in the microwave before the brule torching, so I was able to avoid that atrocity. Russet had their massive chocolate cake that was also quite good, though so big that she only ate a third of it or so. And as we didn't have an ice chest with us, though we had two 50 lb dogs with us, it was not possible to bring the remaining home. Fortunately I made chocolate mousse in chocolate shells yesterday afternoon, so plenty of chocolate is still available to us.

We went and saw the new X-Men Apocalypse movie and quite enjoyed it. I am of two minds when it comes to the X-Men movies. I was a huge fan of the comic in the '80s and '90s, then I drifted away from collecting, and I think the Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen series are amazingly wonderful and a pretty faithful interpretation of the comics. I was disappointed when they didn't do an X-3 movie after Professor X was killed then reincarnated, and you saw Magneto regaining his power. Oh, well. I did just see Stewart is listed as in an 'untitled Wolverine sequel' (due March '17), so there is hope yet.

The McAvoy/Fassbender X-Men? Well, I'm less keen on them than the Patrick/Ian ones, but they're still lots of fun and reinterpret the characters in interesting ways. So a definite plus, and I know I'll be buying it when it comes out on DVD.